“I’m walking toward the vanity,” he narrated. She gripped the sides tighter. “Almost there. I’m picking up the stick.” Rose held her breath and fought the urge to dunk her head back underwater. “I’m trying to read this thing,” Landon said, sounding a little confused when he should have confidently been saying “pregnant” or “not pregnant.” “One line,” he said. “It’s one line; what does that mean?” Rose swiveled her head while he fiddled with the cardboard box.
“Not pregnant,” Rose said. “I’m not pregnant.” She’d expected it to come out like a victory cry, but the words withered on the vine. She was not pregnant. She did not want to be pregnant. So where had that pit in her stomach come from, and why wouldn’t it sink?
“Not pregnant,” Landon repeated. “I told you it would all be okay.” The words felt hollow, his eyes dull. “Hey, why don’t I go get you that wine from the basement now?” he said. “Let’s celebrate. I’ll order in some sushi, too. We’ll have a ‘you’re not pregnant’ celebration.”
“Sure,” Rose said, her heart still beating fast as a butterfly’s wing. “Great idea.”
The room felt too empty the moment he left. She picked up her phone and called the one person who could fill the void.
“You took the test,” Poppy said, clearly out of breath.
“Jesus, are you okay?”
“I’m on a StairMaster,” she breathed. “Stop avoiding the question.”
“It’s negative.”
“Oh, thankGod!” she squealed, granting the universe the reaction Rose hadn’t been able to muster. “You better make an appointment with your OB first thing tomorrow morning and lock that down.”
“Yeah,” Rose said noncommittally. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Wait, are you okay?” Poppy asked. “Why aren’t you screaming?”
“I don’t know,” Rose said. And then she couldn’t stop herself. She started to cry.
“Oh my God, are you crying?”
Her chest shook and she folded into herself. “What is wrong with me?”
“I thought—” Poppy took a deep breath and a harsh beeping blared through the phone. “Sorry, I need to stop climbing stairs for this. I thought you didn’t want kids?”
“I thought I didn’t, either.”
Knuckles rapped on the door. “Can I come in?” Landon asked from behind the thick oak.
“I have to go,” Rose said into the phone. “Talk later?”
“Obviously. And hey, tell Landon to watch his head on that door frame.” Rose snorted and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands, streaking her skin with black mascara and eyeliner.
Landon eased the door open, a bottle of wine in one hand and two glasses balanced in the other. “I come bearing gifts.”
“I really need it,” she said, voice cracking. Landon took in her puffy red eyes, ringed with streaky black.
“You’re sad.” It was a statement with the slightest inflection of a question, like he couldn’t quite decide which tack he wanted to take.
“So are you,” she said, reaching for a glass.
“You told Poppy?”
“Yeah,” said Rose. “She wants you to know that you’re still annoyingly tall.”
“Message received.” Landon poured the wine all the way to the top, so high it sloshed over the rim when he moved. “Is there room enough for two in there?” They’d only ever tried to do this once, on their first night in the new house. Rose had begged and begged him to watch the sunset from the new clawfoot tub, and he’d finally relented and tried his best to contort his long legs into a shape that wouldn’t do any permanent bodily damage. The fact that he was proposing they try again now spoke to how desperately he must have wanted Rose to feel loved.
“More than enough,” she said.
He undid the buttons of his perfectly pressed shirt one by one, undid the buckle on his sturdy black belt, pulled down the black boxer briefs she’d gifted him for Valentine’s Day, and clumsily slipped into the bath behind her. His hands circled her waist, slippery from the oils and bubbles he’d added at the start. Rose leaned into him, helping his hands find her breasts, showing him how she wanted to be touched. “Tell me what it would look like,” she said, “to have a baby with you.”
“The making part or the having part,” he whispered in her ear.
